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The UK head of the Raelian sect, which claims to have produced the world's
first human clones, today denied the announcement was an elaborate
hoax.

A freelance journalist who said he would oversee DNA testing to prove
whether or not a clone had been produced suspended his efforts. But
Glen
Carter, UK president of the Raelian movement, said journalist Michael
Guillen had stopped his work because people had accused him of being
a
"lunatic".

Mr Carter said the sect wanted to get the clones tested as soon as possible
to "get the show on the road". Mr Guillen, a former science editor
for US
network ABC, was investigating the claims made by the sect's research
company Clonaid that a baby girl named Eve born last month was a clone.

A second "clone" was said to have been born last week to Dutch lesbians
and
Clonaid claims three more will be born by the end of January.

Mr Carter told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I understand his claims
and I
understand what he said but it's important to be aware that he's faced
a
character assassination for the last couple of weeks or so in the US
and
beginning here, where he's been called an idiot, a lunatic, somebody
who's
not independent. To be honest with you I think he's just showing his
independence.

"It is true that until there is any evidence then there is always the
possibility it's a hoax, I just don't believe that it is a hoax. If
you want
to compromise the safety of the family then yes you could end the situation
in a second. But nobody at Clonaid from my understanding is prepared
to
split up a family simply to save their own faces, I think that would
be
hugely selfish.

"Just because no-one sees the truth does not mean it's an error, as
Gandhi
said. When the truth does come out and when the evidence is put forward,
all
this frustration will just be seen as exactly as I see it which is
childish
arrogance and vanity that scientists want to know now."

Mr Carter said he believed the second child, also a girl, would be the
first
to be tested. The testing has been blocked by the American parents
of the
first baby, according to Clonaid, the company founded by the Raelian
sect
that believes space aliens created life on Earth.

In a statement, Mr Guillen said he had assembled experts to do the work
but
suspended the effort last night.

He said: "The team of scientists has had no access to the alleged family
and, therefore, cannot verify first-hand the claim that a human baby
has
been cloned. In other words, it's still entirely possible Clonaid's
announcement is part of an elaborate hoax intended to bring publicity
to the
Raelian movement."

The Food and Drug Administration of the United States has asked for
help
from Korean prosecutors regarding an investigation into Clonaid, a
U.S.-based biotechnology firm that recently claimed to have cloned
two
humans. Seoul prosecutors said they would cooperate with the FDA, and
the
investigation into Clonaid's activities here is expected to become
more
active.

The Seoul District Prosecutors Office, which has been investigating
the
Korean office of Clonaid since last summer, yesterday said the FDA
had
requested information Saturday on its investigation into the firm.
Clonaid's
Korean office has claimed that a cloned human embryo had been implanted
in a
Korean surrogate mother.

Prosecutors in Seoul last week obtained a statement from officials at
the
firm's local office that three Korean women have applied to become
surrogate
mothers and that one of them recently left Korea for the United States.
But
prosecutors said they were not able to verify the officials' claims.

With the cooperation of the U.S. agency, Seoul prosecutors expect the
investigation to gain new momentum. "Being limited to investigating
Clonaid's local office has hindered our investigation," a prosecutor
said.

Prosecutors privately said they doubt the firm's claim that it has placed
a
cloned human embryo in a Korean surrogate mother. But in e-mail interviews
with the JoongAng Ilbo, the firm's local spokesman, Kwak Gi-hwa, wrote
"The
Korean surrogate mother definitely exists." He added, "The government
has
unwarranted fears about human cloning. Artificial insemination, which
once
spurred ethical debates, is accepted now."

4. Advocacy group wants Bush apology for eugenics.
Government had to know about sterilizations, it says

7 January 2003
http://www.journalnow.com/wsj/news/MGBXKLNLHAD.html

Advocates for the disabled are asking President Bush to apologize on
behalf
of the nation for programs operated by North Carolina and 32 other
states
that sterilized as many as 65,000 people before ending in the 1980s.

"The federal government had to know something about it if 33 states
were
doing this," said Keith Kessler of Dale City, Va., who sent a letter
to Bush
this week of behalf of the Disabled Action Committee, an advocacy group
that
publishes a national newsletter.

In his letter to Bush, Kessler wrote that governors in North Carolina,
Oregon and Virginia have apologized for sterilization programs in their
states.

Gov. Mike Easley apologized last month in response to a series of stories
in
the Winston-Salem Journal that provided details about North Carolina's
program for the first time.

Sterilizations nationwide were carried out as part of the eugenics movement,
which made exaggerated claims that mental illness, genetic defects
and
social ills could be eliminated by sterilization. In North Carolina,
children as young as 10 were sterilized under a state program often
characterized by coercion and flawed intelligence testing.

By the 1960s, the program was mainly targeting young black women. The
North
Carolina program sterilized more than 7,600 people between 1929 and
1974 and
was the third largest in the country, after California and Virginia.

Three sterilization victims profiled in the Journal all said that a
presidential apology is needed, as well as some form of compensation.

"It (an apology) would mean a lot, but also, what are they going to
do about
it?" said Nial Cox Ramirez, 56, of Riverdale, Ga., who was sterilized
in
1965.

Since Easley issued his apology, victims and legislators have demanded
that
the state do more.

"I will be doing everything that I can to make sure that this kind of
practice ceases and desists and will not happen again," said state
Rep.
Larry Womble, D-Forsyth.

Womble said that hearings on the state's sterilization program and
reparations to sterilization victims are options to consider when the
legislature reconvenes later this month.

Skip Alston, the president of the state branch of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, agreed. He said that the state
NAACP
has put the issue on its legislative agenda.

Alston also has talked to several black legislators about taking up
the
issue.

"They're very supportive," he said.

Alston also said that the NAACP plans to hold public hearings around
the
state as part of its own investigation into the program.

Womble and Alston support the push for a federal apology, as well as
U.S.
congressional hearings on sterilization programs in other states.

One member of Congress from North Carolina isn't certain that federal
hearings are needed.

"My first take on it is that this is really something for the states
to look
at and the media to open up," said U.S. Rep. Richard Burr, R-5th.

"I'm not sure about any federal review of what went on, with something
that
was really driven by the states," said Burr, who added that he might
feel
differently if it turns out the federal government helped pay for
sterilizations.

If federal money was spent, Burr said, a congressional investigation
might
be appropriate "so that we could get some kind of accounting for people
on
what did happen (with federal support)."

He said he thought that what went on during the eugenic sterilization
movement "could not happen today."

Newspapers in Virginia and Oregon have also investigated their state's
sterilization programs.

"I think it's just going to keep snowballing," Kessler said.

Before the president apologizes, Kessler said, congressional hearings
are
needed.

"They would have to be awfully blind or deaf or just plain out of the
loop
(not to know)," he said.

Victims are "scattered throughout the United States," he said.

The Disabled Action Committee decided to ask for a national apology
because
people with disabilities were among the 65,000 victims, he said.

Kessler doesn't ask for reparations in his letter. He just wants to
make
sure that similar programs don't happen again, he said. "If we don't
learn
from our mistakes, we're doomed to repeat them."

He is not worried that his chances of a presidential response may be
slim.

A flier hanging on a pole in Brooklyn looks, at first glance, as if
it might
offer a room for rent or a job. There are phone numbers, dollar signs
and
tabs for people to tear off and take with them.

But the offer is intended for a specific group: drug-addicted men and
women.
"Get birth control, get cash," the flier reads. "If you are addicted
to
drugs and/or alcohol then this offer is for you."

While offers of birth control to drug addicts are common - distribution
of
condoms in particular, as a means not only for birth control but also
to
stem the spread of AIDS - this offer is much more radical. It offers
men and
women $200 to be sterilized or put on long-term birth control.

The group making the offer, Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity, or
Crack,
contends that the program is a humane effort to keep children from
being
born to women ill-equipped to raise them. Critics counter that it is
little
more than a bribe to women to make an irreversible decision, and argue
that
counseling is the best method for both ending drug use and promoting
responsible parenthood.

So far, the presence of the group in New York is minimal; it is based
in
California, and its only chapter here consists of a 27-year-old office
worker from Brooklyn, who with the help of her husband and another
volunteer
has posted fliers across the city and held meetings with hospitals
and
community groups. But if Crack's reception in other cities is any
indication, there is likely to be heated debate about the efficacy
and the
ethics of its offer.

"The program is fundamentally incompatible with a health care policy
that
respects a woman's right to choose," said Donna Lieberman, executive
director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "It certainly raises
policy
concerns for government entities to be providing referrals to this
program
or endorsing it in any way."

The organization was started in Orange County, Calif., in 1997 by Barbara
Harris, a housewife and former waitress, after she adopted four children
from the same drug-addicted mother. Children born to drug addicts regularly
suffer emotional scars and medical disabilities and end up in foster
care at
taxpayers' expense, she said.

"It's common sense," she said. "Why should a drug or alcohol addict
get
pregnant? I watched how my children suffered when I brought them home
from
the hospital, and no child should go through that."

Critics, however, say that Crack's stance is aimed not at helping children
but at selective breeding. They point to comments like those Mrs. Harris
made in 1998, when she was quoted in the British edition of Marie Claire
magazine saying: "We don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter
them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these
women
are literally having litters of children." The organization has softened
its
message, and now refers to itself as Project Prevention as often as
it calls
itself Crack.

But opponents say Crack's $200 offer misses the real issue, which is
helping
people get treatment for their addiction.

"What she's doing is suggesting there are certain neighborhoods where
it is
dangerous for some people to be reproducing," said Lynn Paltrow, executive
director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. "It suggests they
are not
worthy of reproducing. It is very much like the eugenics history in
America.
The Nazis said if you just sterilized the sick people and Jews you
would
improve the economy."

When it first started, Crack offered payments on a sliding scale, giving
more money to women who chose tubal ligations and men who chose vasectomies
than to those who chose long-term birth control like intrauterine devices,
Norplant or Depo-Provera.

But the criticism was so harsh that the group changed its policy and
began
offering a flat payment of $200. Women submit such documents as an
arrest
report or doctor's letter to prove they use drugs. They have the procedure
done, usually paid for with government assistance, and then they send
Crack
written proof.

FLORENCE (Reuters Health) - Italy's Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia
has
extended for another six months a ban on cloning enacted in 1997, while
waiting for the country's Senate to approve a law on assisted reproduction.

The ban, which forbids any form of experimentation and intervention
"even
indirectly" in the field of human cloning, will be valid until June
30, as
written in the state official journal Gazzetta Ufficiale.

Sirchia also extended other articles, which prohibit the commercialisation
of "gametes and human embryos and any genetic material." The validity
of a
2001 ordinance, which bans imports of embryos or gametes, has also
been
stretched to the same deadline.

The measure has been taken "considering that the reasons which prompted
the
previous bans are still subsisting," the ordinance says.

Italy has been waiting for a law regulating assisted fertility for 36
years.
A new, controversial law, which was approved by the Italian parliament
in
June, is due to be debated at the Senate in February.

The new regulation would include prison terms of up to 20 years, fines
up to
1 million euros, and the end of the individual's career for "anyone
who
realises a project which aims to obtain a human being from one starting
cell, genetically identical to another human being, alive or dead."

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